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Sport similar to pétanque / FRI 8-21-26 / Leader in a robe called a kasaya / Jazz musician Jamal / Coupling rings? / Losing control emotionally, in slang / First filmmaker to receive the Order of Culture in Japan / One-named pop star with Monkey Puzzle Records / ___ Crosley, author of 2008's "I Was Told There'd Be Cake"
Friday, August 21, 2026
Constructor: Adryel W. Robles Ojeda
Relative difficulty: Medium
Word of the Day: AHMAD Jamal (33D: Jazz musician Jamal) —
Ahmad Jamal (born Frederick Russell Jones; July 2, 1930 – April 16, 2023) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader, and educator. For six decades, he was one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz. He was a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Master and won a Lifetime Achievement Grammy for his contributions to music history. [...] Trained in both traditional jazz ("American classical music", as he preferred to call it) and European classical style, Jamal was praised as one of the greatest jazz innovators over the course of his exceptionally long career. Following bebop greats like Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Jamal entered the world of jazz at a time when speed and virtuosic improvisation were central to the success of jazz musicians as artists. Jamal, however, took steps in the direction of a new movement, later coined "cool jazz"—an effort to move jazz in the direction of classical music. He emphasized space between notes in his musical compositions and interpretations instead of focusing on the fast-paced bebop style. // Because of this style, Jamal was "often dismissed by jazz writers as no more than a cocktail pianist, a player so given to fluff that his work shouldn't be considered seriously in any artistic sense".[48] Stanley Crouch, author of Considering Genius, offered a very different reaction to Jamal's music, claiming that, like the highly influential Thelonious Monk, Jamal was a true innovator of the jazz tradition and is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Charlie Parker. (wikipedia)
• • •
I think I was supposed to find OOH AAH POINT and "SO DARN CUTE" charming, but sadly I didn't. The first seems exceedingly trivial (how would I know about this goofy name?) and the latter ... is fine, I guess, but I liked it better when I had it as SO DAMN CUTE (really gotta check your crosses! HEMS looked very right, until I looked at the actual clue: 52D: Possessive pronoun (HERS). And that wasn't the only mistake I made, by a long shot. We already covered the ELYSÉES misspelling. Then there was the double-wrong disaster to open the puzzle. I wrote in EMIR / REBUS for 1A: Leader in a robe called a kasaya / 4D: Puzzle) (LAMA / ADDLE). Genius! I thought Colo.'s neighbor was NEV (there's a whole damn state between Colo. and NEV! My mom and sister live in Colo., I should know this, but I was operating on instinct). No other mistakes today, though there were a few struggles. Really couldn't make sense of 40D: One might leave you unprotected at night (BED HOG). If you hog the blankets you leave someone "unprotected." A BED HOG just takes over the damn bed, spacewise. Also, the "One" in that clue is ambiguous—it suggests object, not human being, which is what confused me most.
Bullets:
- 15A: Coupling rings? (BOOTY CALLS) — cute clue, but this expression hasn't been fresh in a good while. So weird (i.e. typical) that the NYTXW only started including BOOTYCALL(S) in the 2020s. The expression was coined in 1993 and became popular enough to be the subject (and title) of a whole-ass movie by 1997. Then, time passed. A lot of time. 24 years! And then it debuted in the NYTXW (2021). And we've had four more appearances since. That's ... quite a time lag. Maybe the term is still current, I have no idea. People mostly text now, though, right? BOOTY CALLS are not to be confused with BUTT DIALS (NYTXW debut: 2013 (as BUTTDIALED)).
[yikes—the '90s were ... something]
- 27A: One-named pop star with Monkey Puzzle Records (SIA) — is "Monkey Puzzle Records" supposed to help? That adds no pertinent information. If you don't know SIA, you damn sure don't know Monkey Puzzle Records. Maybe the idea is that we like puzzles so we'll like knowing this trivia? :/ Also, adding "protocol" to 45A: Focus of a concussion protocol was just confusing. I wanted something more technical, more specifically sportsy, but I just ended up back at the focus of every concussion: the HEAD. Overwritten clue for a basic answer.
- 7D: Sport similar to pétanque (BOCCE) — "Pétanque" sounds like a card game. It is not. You throw balls. At other balls. It's very French.
- 31D: Metal tube in a nuclear reactor (FUEL ROD) — good answer, made better for reminding me of the time Homer didn't win Employee of the Week at the nuclear power plant.
Also (speaking of The Simpsons), a FUEL ROD implies the existence of a Fuel Todd.
That's all for today. See you next time.
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
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131 comments:
Medium. Friday-appropriate difficulty level. Liked it.
* * * * _
Overwrites:
It took a few misspellings to get the Champs-ELYSEES at 20D and KUROSAWA at 37D.
My 33A jazz musician was AHMAl before he was AHMAD. That made the 45A concussion focus HEAl instead of HEAD.
Like OFL, I thought Colo. was a neighbor to NEv rather than NEB at 34D. We both could use a remedial geography class.
At 41D I confused my game ratings with movie ratings and had RATED g instead of E.
WOEs:
Director RYAN COOGLER (9D).
Author SLOANE Crosley at 13D.
Ratatouille character EMILE at 19A (but easily inferred).
22A Mathematician Terrence TAO.
NBA Rookie of the Year LAMELO Ball (23A).
Never heard of 24D OOH AAH POINT at the Grand Canyon.
50D boxer Julio CESAR Chávez.
Very frustrating Natick. No cheats, but I had "back lot" instead of BACKLOG ("rate" didn't seem right, but I didn't think of RAGE). Foreign words and names were prominent, so I agree with the medium-difficulty assessment.
Rex zeroed right in on the excessive use of trivia in this one, which is kind of a shame because it had the potential to be pretty good otherwise. It already takes some pretty good solving chops to be successful on a Friday, and if you need to be a trivia buff as well, then I’m certainly not in your target demographic today. Sorry, but laddering name upon name upon name is not my idea of a good time.
On what planet does “jejune” mean ARID ?
Nice friday puzzle!!! Took me 15 minutes last night, so that's medium. Had NEv before NEB (@REX), Very proud of myself for spelling ELYSEES right (it was a guess), and dredging RYANCOOGLER's name up from seeing OOGL.... It was a little name heavy. But boy that central stack was perfect. First answers in were LAMELO and ARAMAIC, but then the rest of that NW corner sat blank until the very end. Finally just guessed LABELS off just the LS, and was able to guess the rest up there. Thanks, Adryel, for a terrific Friday challenge! : )
Trivia fest is right - mostly plug in type easy but I can see some having an issue. Nice to see KUROSAWA but just a long gimme. Similar with the full proper name addition of COOGLER - waste of real estate. Rex highlights the rest of it - it does get tiring for a late week puzzle.
Paris 1919
I liked the look of the empty grid. The center tri-stack is fine - although I’m not sure why NEB was in there like that. Rex discusses BOOTY CALL - along with AMBER ALES and CO-CHAMPION makes for a weak NE. Have hiked to OOH AAH POINT - it is spectacular but again just more trivia - if you know it it’s fine. To put LAMELO in a trivia based puzzle with JAMAL and KUROSAWA is weak.
Free Man In Paris
Over quick at least - which is not ideal for a Friday. I felt this one had some promise if edited differently - the final product as offered didn't hit for me.
GRAM
I wondered this, too.
Pétanque, I believe, is a southern French term for the also common boules, meaning balls. Bocce!
Believe me, Rex, as our pooch demonstrates basically every night, a BEDHOG does not in fact need to be human.
Boules is a generic term. Pétanque is a form of boules. I imagine lawn bowling is also a form of boules.
Certainly my first thought is childish, immature.
I was so disappointed when INANIMATE CARBON ROD wouldn’t fit.
I wrote “iris” for focus of a concussion protocol (blown irises) and admired the eye fake of “focus.”
I like a challenging puzzle but not when the challenges involve correctly spelling the names I don't know. I would rate a medium but a good amount of time was spent on backtracking and re-entering names I guessed. Cluing "arid" as jejeune was a real and unnecessary stretch.
Sinners stumped us at trivia night and Coogler stumped me today as did so many of the names. My wife had a cat called Toshiro, so Kurosawa was not one of them. Jejune always makes me think of Woody Allen's Love and Death. A v. stoned group of us literally rolling in the aisles, a great memory that later controversy cannot erase. Are jejunosity and aridity synonymous? Bit of a stretch. This was a rare Friday. I get easily bored and the preponderance of unknown names induced me to cheat a little. Not proud of it, but hey, I'd delayed breakfast long enough.
I had to look up COOGLER and LAMELO. Crossing the latter with OOH AAH POINT was just mean. I filled it in to end the puzzle and got an error message. Long ago, I had seen it might be TAI/SNOT or TAi SNiT, and went with the latter, thinking I knew where to go if I was told that something was amiss. But by the time I did get that message I had forgotten, so I had to go over all the entries to find it again.
I think of LAMAs as monks, so I hesitated to call them "leaders." But Ogden Nash says they're priests, so OK.
On the jejune = ARID thing, they each can be applied to a remark that is devoid of wit or spirit. At least, that was my reasoning.
After first pass I realized this was a First Gear puzzle, time to shut the door and grind. Many no-knows and vague or multi-answer-possibility clues. Time to give the brain solitude to work behind the scenes as well as on the surface.
My brain lives for this. Maybe the Times is easing toward making tough themeless puzzles the rule once again. May it be.
Those three-stacks in the NE, center, and SW have zing and pop, six of those nine answers NYT debuts, including the lovely THEATER GEEK, MEATBALL, and GETS THE AX.
Lovely short answers as well, in JOSTLE, ROCOCO, BRASH, and BOCCE. And more loveliness in the form of splat fill rewards after finally getting tough answers.
In my crossword gym, this was a hard day, and I left the box feeling very satisfied. Freshness, toughness, loveliness – a right proper Friday. More please, Adryel. Thank you for a splendid outing!
P.S. -- Lovely PuzzPair©️ in the SW of HEWS and GETS THE AX.
Hey All !
Impossible here without straight up Googing. Tried to stick to just looking up the unknown names, but still cheated on some regular answers. Nice puz, but off my wavelength.
Had NEB in for TEX and WYO in for NEB, but figured out MEATBALL SUB, so erased both, put NEB where it belonged, and then took forever to see TEX. Wanted GETSfired, the ole brain refusing to see anything else.
The Grand Canyon is a state away out here. As a former limo driver, I've taken people to the West Rim, haven't actually seen it myself. It's about a two hour-ish drive (going off memory, so take that as you will!), whereas the North Rim is close to six hours! I've seen the pics, good enough for me. No need to OOH and AAH at OOHAAHPOINT.
Got an SB fave with ROCOCO. Nice extended @M&A's Jaws of Themlessness.
Hope y'all have a great Friday!
One F
RooMonster
DarrinV
Rex, my good chap, this wasn't a Medium. You can't rate it a Medium when it has AHMAD, SLOANE, TAO, LAMELO. Those were some NATICK level names there. A 2008 author, crossing a 2006 Fields Medal winner? They made it nearly impossible to get into the NE. Plus that inscrutable clue on BOCCE. "Sport similar to pétanque" No one knows this. Just give us BOCCE so we have a prayer of getting anything else. That and ABC being ridiculously clued. Please, we need some toeholds in these corners.
Agreed
Challenge for me today but somehow managed to finish and agree with Rex that there are a tad too many names in this one and no…I don’t really care to learn SIAs record label.
Also, agree with Rex on BEDHOG. A blanketHOG will grab the sheet and blanket as they roll over…leaving you “unprotected” and a BEDHOG sprawls out. With that said…I can’t vouch for the fact that the term blanketHOG exists. I just know I used it and that my husband stopped doing it decades ago.
Agree; well said, @SSJ.
I was in the same boat (went with ARID only because that's what all the crosses gave me). Merriam-Webster gives no version of 'dry' for the jejune, but if you search 'jejune' in Bing, the definition that comes up includes "2. (of ideas or writings) dry and uninteresting." 'Arid' is a synonym for 'dry' in the sense of 'little water,' but I don't think arid is a synonym for 'dry' in the sense meant here (e.g., who has ever used the phrase 'they have an arid sense of humor'?). Bad clue in my opinion.
Really did not enjoy this one for all the reasons that Rex illustrated. A positively joyless slog of names and trivia. Then to kick you when you're down they throw in ROCOCO. Shark Sandwich.
I thought we’re supposed to get a themeless on Fridays. But this one has a theme, and the revealer is in the clue for 1 Down. So many NAMES. So many that an otherwise excellent puzzle became tiresome.
On the plus side, Rex highlights two of the best: the brilliant, deeply expressive AHMAD Jamal, and the compulsively watchable Akira KUROSAWA. That clip is terrific, Rex. Makes me want to learn Japanese just so I can rewatch his movies and get my eyes off the subtitles. So much beauty!
I hilariously imagined a person screaming "AAH AAH!" because they were scared of falling into the Grand Canyon, hence my very wrong aaHAAHPOINT. The fact that LAMELO and YOM were WoEs for me didn't help in this regard, haha. I can't believe this is my reason for DnFing the puzzle!
Also, I am glad I'm not the only person thrown off by Jejune = ARID (and not immature). I was questioning my memory of the word's definition for a minute!
In rod we trust!
Rabia, rabia contra la extinción de la luz.
Perfectly JEJUNE, and if I'd known any of the names other than SIA, I would have enjoyed it. As always I am surprised at the shallow depth of humor at the NYTXW, but they've been clear it's not in them to amuse, so why do I keep being amazed?
Our constructor got the "if you wanna make it past the slush pile editor" memo, and dropped a delicious gunk-be-damned 5th grade tee-hee-fest into their inbox.
The center stack is lovely. OOH AAH POINT is first class awesome.
So let's go over this again dear editors: It wouldn't hurt to run "technical stuff" past somebody before running the clues. LA TI DO is only ABC in one key. There are many more LA TI DOs that are NOT ABC than there are ABC. It's why they call them LA TI DO instead of ABC because LA TI DO isn't dependent on being ABC. Frankly, LA TI DO can be whatever it wants to be as long as it's not SOL (or SO for you youngsters) or any of the other chromatic weasels running around also not being ABC most of the time.
In college a few years ago I wrote a musical composition using the words to the Dylan Thomas poem. I've always loved it:
--
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas 1914 – 1953
--
Gunkometer--
People: 10 {gross}
Places: 2
Products: 2
Partials: 6
Foreignisms: 6
--
Gary's Grid Gunk Gauge: 26 of 68 (38%)
Funny Factor: 3 😐
🔥 Ooh-la-la! 🔥 BOOTY CALLS. Come (together). SNOT. Laid in a LAP. TATA.
Uniclues:
1 How the Dalai gets jolly.
2 Those times when you ask a trusted acquaintance to put lotion on your tush.
3 Say, "It was a stupid job and my supervisor was an idiot."
4 The apostle with the jostle.
5 How The Coyote glows in the dark.
6 Blow your nose.
1 LAMA AMBER ALES
2 ARID BOOTY CALLS
3 GETS THE AX RAGE
4 ARAMAIC BED HOG
5 ACME FUEL ROD
6 JOSTLE SNOT (~)
My Fascinating Crossword Uniclue Keepsake from Last Year: C-SPAN. SENATE'S CINERAMA.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Meanings of JejuneDull and dry: Lacking intellectual depth, significance, or nourishment.Childish: Displaying a lack of maturity, simplicity, or puke-worthy foolishness.Common SynonymsInsipidVapidBanalJuvenilePuerileWord OriginThe word comes from the Latin jejunus, which means fasting or empty of food. Over time, an empty meal turned into a metaphor for an empty, unrewarding idea or conversation.
The names got me. Looked up five of them.
Learned the bizarre name of the Grand Canyon observation site. But that was the only plus. The three elevens were meh. Like the puzzle itself.
ARID is listed as a weak adjective in M-W. Certainly no one uses it in the literal sense of dry, but I guess in the sense of boring, lifeless. Judges say: ok for a Friday.
Actually liked this a little more than Rex, but agree that it was a real namefest. It helped us a lot to guess correctly for ARAMAIC, MEATBALL SUB (guess I was hungry) and ROCOCO (wife was an art major), all with no crosses yet in place. Better lucky than good.
Knew LAMELO (one of the baller sons of a shameless promoter-father). Most of the other names needed plenty of help from crosses.
Plenty of foreignisms today, three of them French. @Gary will certainly point that out, as well as BOOTY CALLS, which we found...cheeky.
Expected OOH AAH POINT might be the WOTD, Wikipedia knows it as the South Kaibab Trail. With enough crosses in place, including both double vowels (initially "uh-oh, something's wrong"), it was inferable and added some unexpected zing.
We disliked the clue for BED HOG. Doesn't a bed hog encroach on your space, perhaps forcing you, precariously, toward the edge of the bed? Leaving you unprotected would be more like what a Cover HOG would do, no?
Record label clues are as unappreciated by us as Star Wars clues; thankfully the latter's streak continues!
Anyone else have BaD dOG before BED HOG?
Nice uniclues today. Though I'm not a musician, I also raged against the ABC/LATIDO equivalency.
Names, names, names all over the place. But I liked the puzzle anyway.🎈🎈🎊🎊
High tea and afternoon tea mixed up again, either by the creator, the editor, or both. Pasty would have been accurate, but not scone.
Should one resist when BOOTYCALLS? Asking for a friend.
I've got some special PJs that help with my gout symptoms. So when they flare up, I CRASHINGOUT wear. It's nice and warm, so it helps with the BEDHOG problem too.
I thought I was seeing something rude in the row at 40A, but it turned out to be a BRASH MER RAJ.
Psychiatrist: How would you describe your emotional state after experiencing RAGE ISSUES at OOHAAHPOINT?
Patient: AHMAD.
Thank God for the hint of Monkey Puzzle Records, because I think we all know the 2 and 4 letter artists there. And thanks for the fun, tough Friday, Adryel W. Robles Ojeda.
That was a very fun Friday! Loved BED HOG. Was a bit surprised by BOOTY CALL.
Happy to share that the NYT stats sheet indicated that today marks my 365th completed puzzle in a row. Rex, what's your streak at???
A bit tough for a Friday.
Me too. Crashed out on exactly that one letter. Had the T instead of a G. After somehow battling through the cascade of names and foreign words, it sucked to DNF on that letter.
Bill Buckley used jejune in precisely that way all the time.
Guessing this outfit weren’t subscribers to The New Republic.
I think it hinges on a secondary definition for both words being somewhat similar to each other. Poor cluing.
Since I don’t solve on vacation, not that long!
Was able to finish, but way too many obscure (to me) names.
Got started OK in the NW but went elsewhere because of the ARI__, where ARID , I learn today, is at least a possibility. Wound up with RAGE in the SE and then ran into the namestorm. Yikes. I did know LAMELO and KUROSAWA but others, huh? Resisted the urge to google and got them from crosses, but not without a fight. Finished in the SW after changing RATEDG to RATEDE (hi @Conrad), which was slowing things down forever.
Some good stuff here for sure, but my nit is too many short answers, which I often need for help, with multiple possibilities. Neighboring states? NL East teams? More than a few, and I needed some letters. On the plus side we had a MEATBALLSUB, which is the next best thing to a classic Italian sub, and now I want one of each.
Interesting if sticky Friday, AWRO, Although We Really Ought to have fewer names. Thanks for some hard-earned fun.
You mean National Revue, I think.
the merriam webster page for arid has a direct link to jejune! who knew
merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arid
also i like that jejune is their most searched word today
No whooshing for me today. The names got me at every turn. I was beginning to think I wasn't going to be able to solve the NW (my last quadrant) with out looking up LAMELO, the most unguessable of all the names today. Finally I saw MINI MART and that gave me the rest of the vaguely clued 4-letter words up there.
And I also misspelled ELYSsee which gummed up both THEATER GEEK and BR??? = Bold. And AHMAD might be AHMeD?
My college French didn't extend to translating etendue into "expanse" but a 3-letter word ending in ER had to be MER.
Adryel W. Robles Ojeda, you've served up the tough Friday we've been clamoring for, thanks!
Hard puzzle to start. I bounced off the NW and NE corners. LENT over OFUSE supported by LUTES was my first glimmer of hope. Then NEB gave me MEATBALLSUB and KUROSAWA was one of the names I knew so the SE corner went down first.
Another name I knew was OOHAAHPOINT. It was the only part of the Grand Canyon I could get my wife to hike to as it is close to the rim. Otherwise that double AA next to a double TT would have convinced me I'd made a mistake since I was slow on MITT.
The one mistake I didn't catch was HEAL crossed with AHMAL. I "finished " in the NE with the O of TAO and SNOT only to get the "so close " message. I wasn't happy with HEAL but wouldn't the HEAD be the "focus" of any "concussion protocol ." Do other parts of the body get concussions too? It still took a few sweeps of the grid to find it.
For Ted and others: Starting wIth Middle C and ignoring the black keys, the scale, left to right, goes C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. So..."la, ti, do" are matches for "a-b-c." I don't see the problem.
Really enjoyed this one, even if it beat me up a bit. Never a good idea to bolt out of the gate with emir at 1A. Even worse when you correct it with rAjA before finally landing on LAMA. And ARID for 14A! I know what jejune means but I just couldn’t come up with ARID. Juvenile, dumb-ass, or just plain silly, sure, but not ARID. It’s good, I just couldn’t land it for the longest time. Liked it even though it cost me a fair amount of time.
On the other hand, I have to question MEATBALL SUB. I’ve spent a lot of time in Italy and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered one there. Maybe they were offered and I just chose to ignore them because there was so much other good food around.
For the director at 9D I had, of course, our recent repeat visitor Rian Johnson. BOOTY CALL put an end to that one but I still had to work for COOGLER.
A bit embarrassed that it took me so long to get MER for Etendue bleue. I’m supposed to be at least passably bilingual. I’m Canadian, after all. Speaking of which, I had a fair bit of trouble with 61A GETS THE AX because I have always spelled it axe. Is that a Canadian vs American thing? I mean I’ve seen the short version often enough in the NYTXW that I should have caught it, but I struggled in that corner for a while.
Anyway, loved your puzzle, Adryel W. Robles Ojeda. Lots of work and lots of fun.
@Andy Freude, great catch on the "Names" clue. I was too concussed by being hit over the head with them to even think of it.
@Lewis, nice catch on HEWS. Cue the "Lumberjack Song."
Lewis - from a legal point of view your use of ©️ is not appropriate here. I believe you mean ™️ in this context. Not that it is important but I thought I should say something.
NW: EMILE-LAMELO-SIA? REALLY??!!
New Republic? I think you mean National Review.
I had a love/hate relationship with this one.
I absolutely loved the long stacks in the NE, SW and middle. Such great fill and the majority are wonderfully and very much in-the-language. I know I get boring when I laud that kind of thing every time it happens, but hey, I like what I like.
Like @Rex, I liked 59A a little better when I had SODAmNCUTE, but the RATEDE answer is almost as nice.
There was also some nice cluing for BEDHOG, BOOTYCALLS, and ESC, so those were fun.
Now we come to the names, names, names and more names. I was CRASHINGOUT a bit running the alphabet for so many of them. For all the reasons that @Rex so eloquently pointed out, this did take some joy away from the solve. Learning words I don't know while solving is *very* satisfying, trying to guess at names I don't know...not so much. Naticked on the SLOANE/TAO crossing and working on such a long unknown like RYANCOOGLER was...well, tiring. Which is much different than challenging, just not a lot of joy there.
Neighbor states of states are no fun for me either. It's embarrassing, but to this day, if it's not the Northeast (where I've always lived), I have no sense of geography. That is a 100% Hugh thing and not a nit on the puzzle, but it kinda took away from my solving joy. I have a friend who is an ace on where every U.S. state is simply because she had a shower curtain that was essentially a water proof map of the U.S.A. This would have been a quick solution to my problem...
I just spent a few minutes looking at the grid and, upon reflection, the wonderful long stacks were enough to outweigh the meh experience of all the names. Thanks Adryel, there was more than enough to love about this one!
Okay. He spoke ARAMAIC generally, but, when appropriate, he delivered punchlines in Yiddish.
Ann is going to the party. ISSUE?
When the actor Jackman cuts down trees on his property, Hugh HEWS yews.
Boxing legend Chavez was eager to get started on his career at the age of 14. But the boxing officials didn't allow it, noting that Julio CESAR's a lad.
my quick downs-only pass resulted mostly in annoyance with the trivia: here's more french and yet another name. going back up with the acrosses was significantly easier but just as tedious. i enjoyed seeing AHMAD jamal in the puzzle due it reminding me of his album being in my parents' collection growing up.
This was brutal.
It’s borderline bizarre that they can’t get that right. I love it when I hear Shortz interviewed and he repeats that jive nonsense about the Times only publishing “4 or 5” mistakes a year.
The east side was easy-medium but the west side, especially the NW, was very tough for me. In the NW LAMA, LEMELO, SIA, CRASHING OUT, AHMED, OOH AAH POINT, and EMILE were WOEs, plus ARID and ADDLE were stretches for their clues…a very tough corner that took quite a while to suss out.
Costly erasures - GETS fired before THE AX and atoM before GRAM.
A fair amount of crunch and plenty of sparkle, liked it.
I fought my way tooth and nail through this one, only to end up with a very frustrating dnf, when I still haven't entered mathematician TAO into my memory bank and tossed in SNiT instead of SNOT. I even recall thinking, "wait, maybe that should be SNOT" when I typed it in, but I couldn't find it when the Happy Music would not play. I was sure my error was in one of the umpteen unfamiliar names. Sigh.
@Eggs, your use of CRASHINGOUT has got to be among my top 10 faves of eggsforbreakfastisms!
For Liveprof: The actor Jackman is not anti-Semitic, so it isn't NEWS WHEN HUGH HEWS JEWS' YEWS.
now 15 days without a vacation
Agree on everything Rex said. I gave a really good fight to avoid looking up names, but eventually caved and felt no shame. Allowed me to finish and enjoy some of the great long stuff.
One minor thing that annoyed me: Two clues for 3-letter state abbr.s that were both clued as neighbors to another state. State abbr.s are gunk fill anyway, so the best-case scenario is for them to be something quickly passed over and forgotten by the solver, and to have those 3-letter spaces help out for the longer fill. There are seven states bordering Colorado (WYO., NEB., KAN., NME., UTA., ARI., and OKLA.) and six bordering Arkansas (though apparently the correct TEX is the only one with a three-letter abbreviation; Tennessee is not TEN as I originally guessed, and the others are MO., LA., MISS., and OKLA.). I prefer my gunk fill to be quickly passed over and to help with longer answers.
The La ti do issue is a bit more nuanced than mentioned above.
In the US, solfege (do-re-mi...) is typically taught as being movable, corresponding to the notes of a major scale. La ti do corresponds to ABC in the C Major scale. Change keys, to say F Major, and La ti do becomes DEF.
But that's only half the story. There's also Fixed do solfege, where Do always corresponds to C, Re, to D and so on. In many languages other than English, the note names are actually Do Re Mi and so on, corresponding directly to the names we typically use in the US: C, D , E etc. They stay the say regardless of key.
So the editors aren't incorrect. It's just than the typical usage in the US is different than represented in the cluing.
People obsessed with their stats need to take a vacation. Even Rex does it!
This was one where I found the puzzle annoying the whole time, but then ultimately did get a nice feeling of accomplishment when I finished. And in the end, it didn’t take me very long (11:10) despite feeling like it was quite difficult while solving.
I briefly had imam rather than LAMA even though the word for the robe seemed more East Asian than middle eastern. Had a lot of frustrating half-finished clues that I couldn’t parse for awhile, like BED___ and OOHAAH_____ and _____ALES. Briefly had “ledge” instead of point and couldn’t figure out what three letter word could follow “bed.” I have no excuse on the ALES one other than it just didn’t come to me that an amber ale is malty. I think of stouts as malty, I guess. Not much of a beer person. Have never heard of the people matching the LAMELO, SLOANE, AHMAD, CESAR, or TAO clues but somehow muddled through without googling anything. CESAR was a total guess based on the other Cesar Chavez and the Sloane/Tao natick was an educated guess once I had the other letters in Sloane. Luckily I’m a movie and geography buff so the director names and state borders were footholds for me (of course, Arkansas borders several states including Tennessee, so I got stuck there for a bit assuming it’d be TEn because I could see no fit for “x” until I FINALLY figured out GETS THE AX. I also speak French which helped with some of the rest of the puzzle. I had SO DAng CUTE for a bit there too. Hated the jejune/ARID match and the explanations in the comments aren’t making me accept it any more. ARID is in the puzzle all the time and this felt like an overwrought effort to come up with a new clue for it. Juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. Lots of tricky stuff and ultimately I feel more irritated at it than pleased I conquered it.
Not much better in the entire world than a good meatball sandwich.
There is none.
Yep I sure did.
How embarrassing.
In the NY Times crossword archives. That’s where I know it from lol
Challenging for me because of an almost impenetrable NW corner. ARAMAIC was my first answer in, but I could do nothing with the crosses. That is, I wondered about LAMA, but couldn't confirm it. So I went next door, where I was relieved to return to crossword kindergarten with MOOS. More seriously, RYAN COOGLER gave me a big boost, and I enjoyed working my way around through lively answers in the SE and SW. Then back to face the NW. A combination of alphabet juggling and some neurons waking up eventually got me LAMELO, ARID, and ADDLE (which could have been my word of the day, at least for that corner). Satisfying to finish!
Not a Natick. Neither is a proper noun. One isn’t even trivia.
Wish Rex would take a permanent vacation.
Yes, NW corner! Needed my only cheat there today with LAMELO to finish.
Loved bootycall when I finally got it!
So not for Rex. But midi puzxle claims in error that "many" vets experience ptsd. Both wrong and insulting.
Nyt midi claims today that "many" vets experience ptsd. Wrong. Insulting. PTSD: National Center for PTSD
"PTSD is slightly more common among Veterans than civilians. At some point in their life, 7 out of every 100 Veterans (or 7%) will have PTSD."
On the other hand, Terrance Tao appears very frequently in the puzzle.
Hah, your "I'm Canadian after all" reminds me of hiking above the Arctic Circle in Sweden during June, with 24 hours of sunlight. Around 10 PM, I met an older man hiking alone and asked, in Swedish, if he spoke English. His reply, "Of course I speak English, I am German!"
Yes, the names really dragged this one down. Unknown Names for me: EMILE LAMELO SIA stacked right off the bat, then RYANCOOGLER SLOAN AHMAD CESAR. Plus quite a few that weren't Unknowns but still got annoying. And those 3 letter abbrevs, PHI NEB TEX. I have been to most of the states, including TEX and NEB, but there was just no way their clues were any help: "Neighbor of Colo. / Ark.". Yuck!
Anyway, on the bright side I did like OOHAAH POINT. When I first walked up the the South Rim to see a view that was familiar from photos, it didn't blow me away at first. But then I sat down and spent 15 minutes just letting it soak in... and it was great. I saw a tiny white speck at the bottom and thought: oh, it's a guy in a white t-shirt. But when I looked through my telephoto lens, it was: the metal roof of a huge building!!! Really a bizarre distortion of scale. Meanwhile, all the other tourists walked up, looked at the view for 15 seconds, then left.
Really liked coupling rings/BOOTY CALLS. As a young-ish person (mid 20s) the phrase is still current. I also liked seeing CRASHING OUT. I really *didn't* like "In place?" for WHERE ITS AT -- it didn't even scan properly after I had solved the puzzle. I think the question mark made it especially confusing. Also a "Drama club enthusiast" is definitely a Theater Kid, not a THEATER GEEK. Plus, why were there three separate French clues? Embarrassing. Finally pleasseee can we stop doing EDT/EST.
I made the same point about state abbreviations earlier, thanks for filling in the details. I also mentioned the NL East clue, where three-letter answers could be ATL. PHI.MIA, or NYM. I'll leave out the Washington Nationals, don't know of a three-letter abbreviation for them.
Thjs is why I was thinking ABC would be better represented by do-re-mi, the first three things in a series.
Completely agree with RP about the names. I managed to chip away at it eventually, but EMILE, LAMELO, KUROSAWA and COOGLER were brutal.
Yep. Also theater GOER and ARABAIC.
I tried ELYSSES and stubbornly stuck with it because I just knew it was right. Finally gave in and admitted defeat.
Scared of heights? Ha ha ha!
Oohaahpoint: infantile
Not on the corner of planet Earth I inhabit
Anon 9;05. Unfortunately the "tea/high tea" confusion is now a part of our language here in North America. Seems difficult to unravel the confusion, sort out the sources of misinformation, set things straight. I have attended “high tea” at one of the the most British of places outside the UK - the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC - and it was really just “tea”, sometimes called “afternoon tea”. Remember, cucumber sandwiches do not have crusts, damn it! And scones, without oodles of butter and/or jam, are just dry bread. BTW, those veggie sandwiches were really dull. Needed some umami. Salt, at least.
@Teedmn, where were you in northern Sweden? I spent a week in Pajala in 1987. It was July, not June, so the sun did actually set around midnight... for about an hour or so. Never got dark at all; just a beautiful combined sunset/sunrise.
Teedmn. Thanks for the chuckle.
Yeah, high tea is basically dinner/supper (evening meal) and afternoon tea is mid-afternoon snack break with tea & pastries/scones. It's not really difficult
Anon12:41, WTF it's his damn blog. If you don't enjoy it don't come
@pablo (1:33pm) I'm a Nats fan so I should know, but it's a bit of a hornets nest. My exhaustive research (you know, a minute or two online), reveals that WSH is the official version, used by MLB. But for statistics, Baseball Reference uses WSN (because WSH and WAS were used for previous Washington teams). And on scoreboards and in broadcasting WAS is used. No wonder they can't hold a lead in the late innings.
100% agree.
okanaganer. Your OOHAAHPOINT comment reminds me of the time my wife and oldest son and I went for a walk and found ourselves at the San Nicolas plaza in Granada, apparently the best place to view to view the Alhambra.We were a bit weary so we sat on a bench to admire the view and rest our legs. We were there for maybe 20 minutes, maybe a bit more, just admiring this amazing place. It was so peaceful and I began contemplating what it might have been like to sit here in the 1300s. What it might have been like to live in Moorish Spain. And how the hell did they build this masterpiece.
Near the end of our rest, other couples and groups arrived, quickly snapped photos, and left. We didn't take a single pic. Just let the image burn into our memories. I can still see it. No photos necessary.
100% Agree that picking the most alternate, least apt adjective for jejune is just not the best choice for a constructor. I love a challenging puzzle, but in my opinion, the best constructors cleverly make “hard” puzzles without this type of what (after my 60+ years of solving) I call a “lazy dictionary trick.” You’re stuck with a spot in the grid that you really like except for one crosswordese-ish word that works but seems “too obvious for a ‘hard’ puzzle”. So, instead of redoing the spit in your grid, you decode to use the boring crosswordese-ish wordnand turn to the dictionary to see of there’s an alternate definition way, way, way down in the parenthetical small print that’s technically “fair.” Very disappointing, but I see lots of promise with this new constructor. “Dictionary Tricks” are a pet peeve with me, but I easily forgive this one. This is his only his second in the NYT and I agree with Rex that the good parts of this one are good and Friday-esque.
I got it, But it sure took a while. I enoyed it immensely. And was delighted to learn of OOH AAH POINT. I can only imagine how lovely the view must be from there. My only visit to the Canyon was when I was 13, near the end of a camping trip that took us up to the Grand Canyon, and on to the Indian festival in Gallup NM. At the end, most of us were driven to Phoenix and rode in sleepers, on the Sunset Limited. One girl boldly climbed into her boyfriend'a bunk, I recall. but they stayed in their pajamas, I believe.
Anon 1:27. I have to, respectfully, disagree with you about the term THEAT(re)GEEK (sorry, I'm Canadian). I went to a combined regular and Visual & Performing Arts high school. I was a theatre geek with a specialty in Samuel Beckett's work. If you had called me a theatre kid I probably would have been pissed off. Had the term Geek existed then, I would have worn it with pride. I was not a kid. I was young man trying to figure out how to deliver important ideas to an audience. The theatre - especially the work of Beckett, Brecht, Albee, Pinter, Ionesco and more - seemed to me to be the way to go. Yes, I had to sing in South Pacific and dart in and out of doors in Sheridan farces, but that was required in the curriculum. But I was never a theatre kid.
Gotta admit, though, that I did start as a "drama club enthusiast".
RAGE/BACKLOG
Rex coined the word natick 11 years ago
Definition: crossing proper nouns ( as Sam notes) and they also must be obscure AND with an uninferable letter (N.C. Wyeth crossing Natick) Also the poem and the poet are not exactly obscure, at least for us olds. Finally, backlog isn’t obscure either. I am writing because Rex intended natick to be a criticism of the puzzle and I don’t think the cross is in any way unfair. Maybe we need a word for a cross that was impossible for the solver. Like when you don’t know the poem and can’t think of backlog.
I found this puzzle easy but some of the long names like the two directors I knew. In my wheelhouse and all that. So your and Rex’s criticism is valid. On the other hand the clue OOHAAAHPOINT also had a second clue that made it say Wednesday level at most. Like they were feeling guilty about too many names!
TAO
I would say TAO is now NYTimes crosswordese. It has appeared a lot in the last year or so. I see 3 letters math related I try TAO first. It will show up again and is worth remembering.
BOB: This works only in the key of C. Look up "solfege." Bad clue.
Hooray for you !!!!
Thats funny.
Mark it down.
Far too many posters have far too much confidence in their sense of humor. Or intelligence. Or acumen.
Jejune/ARID
I think people forget we are talking about a puzzle not a dictionary. If a a dictionary had only one definition, ARID would be “bad”. But using a secondary meaning in a Friday puzzle is a common and legitimate tactic. I too had to rely solely on crosses. I learned something, as many say here.
I was about to complain angrily about all those names I didn’t know and then suddenly whoosh whoosh with no lookups at all! So I enjoyed that in the end. To Rex’s point there was a way to infer the names as it turned out. It helped to know French though.
Love the RAGE rage poem although I’m not sure I agree with it!
Gary
According to what you said. , the answer ABC is fine. (I know very little about music). It’s a puzzle with clues not definitions ( clues are hints). . As long as it works in one scale, the answer follows crossword rules. Another way of saying, it: an answer doesn’t have to be the equivalent of the clue. unless the clue specifically says so.
Southside Johnny
The last time this error came up someone gave the explanation that the high part comes from the fact that a dinner table is higher than an afternoon tea table. It was (is?) a working class term. What I heard from English friends years ago, “” what are we having for tea tonight ?” Meaning what are we having for supper tonight “ Somewhere along the way Americans heard high tea and assumed it meant afternoon tea, which was(is?) an upper class thing. So pasty at tea, scone at Afternoon Tea.
BTW I would agree with Shorts that the errors are a lot less than people on this blog think they are.
Anonymous 12:41 AN
How witty
Me thinks you are anonymously on the wrong blog.
Awful, just awful.
@okanaganer, it was 1996 and my friends and I took the train from Stockholm to Kiruna and hiked Kungsleden down to Saltoluokta, to the resort there (amazing food there but maybe we were just tired of trail provisions.) it took around 8 days and we had to carry everything in our packs. Mine started out at about 50 lbs. I doubt I could do it today.
The sun actually did go away for about an hour at night when it was occluded by one of the mountains. One of the greatest trips of my life.
You went to a high school with a special concentration in Beckett?
Where? When?
Confused. Would you have been pissed off or or proud at being called a theater geek? You’ve said both.
@Teedmn, that sounds excellent. We did a day trip from Pajala to Kiruna, but the rest of the time we were stuck in town for the 400th anniversary of Pajala, plus a big family reunion for the girl I was traveling with. We did attend a late concert in the park by the river... it started about 10 pm and we stayed until about 2 am when the sun had just risen, then we walked home. Pretty great!
dgd 5:53 PM
I agree. In one case, it's not wrong ... but it's only right in one out of thirty possibilities. One of the primary motivations in solfège is to free singers up to hit relative pitches rather than absolute pitches and easily transpose keys. The clue is lawyerable, but it's still bad.
@Anonymous 1:05 PM
Go-ogle says there's about 15.8 million veterans in the US. That would be 1.1 million people with PTSD by your percentage. Is that not many to you?
So perhaps jejune (though def not arid)
You're absolutely right about connecting that frustration to the NL East clue, @pablo. I often just accept that I'm going to be weak in baseball, but now that you remind me, I also read that clue and thought "???" since there could be so many possible answers. So yes, again, the only possible good thing about gunk fill is to pass it over quickly to help with longer answers, and in a puzzle so full of names, I felt like the constructor owed that to us. :)
Don't feel bad. I *live* in Nevada and put NEV there at first.
Spot-on with the name critique. They killed me, and the puzzle therefore took me much longer than it should have. Not fun.
Anonymous 11:31: not a musician but I think you are right. I often listen to veniceclassicradio.eu (great station if you like classical) and in Italian they always use the “do=C” scale when naming the piece, as in “Sinfonia in re minore” for “Symphony in D minor.”
blah -> dRab -> ARID
BaDDOG before BEDHOG
Anonymous 5:10 PM has it right. “LA TI DO“ = “ABC” is accurate only for people who don’t know anything about music.
Similarly (see above), the poster who wrote “(C)” instead of “TM” should take 5 minutes out of their busy day and learn what each symbol really means.
Why no more comments about Roz Chast’s incredible Crossword Odyssey Sketchbook in the most recent New Yorker? Brilliant
as she always is, she has outdone herself. Actually one anonymous comment earlier, but I should think all of the readers of this blog would have died over it!
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